Kohlhepp: Superbike killings 'like a video game'

Saturday

Jun 10, 2017 at 10:41 PMJun 12, 2017 at 4:51 PM

Alyssa Mulliger Staff Writer @AMulligerSHJ

Two days after his arrest on Nov. 3, 2016, Todd Kohlhepp sat across a table from investigators and calmly began describing how he committed four of the most notorious murders in Spartanburg County history.

Video footage of the investigators’ interview with Kohlhepp, who recently pleaded guilty to killing four people at Superbike Motorsports in Chesnee in 2003, and three other people on his property in Woodruff, is among the case files released to media outlets Friday.

Inside a small interrogation room at the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office, Kohlhepp, dressed in an orange jumpsuit and sipping from a bottle of water, recounts the day he shot Superbike owner Scott Ponder; Ponder's mother and part-time employee, Beverly Guy; service manager and mechanic Brian Lucas; and mechanic's assistant Chris Sherbert.

In the Nov. 5 video, Kohlhepp tells investigators he had bought a Suzuki motorcycle from Superbike sometime in 2003. He still has the T-shirt the shop gave him, he says.

Kohlhepp says his grandfather gave him the down payment for the motorcycle.

“I had it 14 days and it got stolen from the front of (my) apartment complex,” he says before taking another drink of water.

Before the bike was stolen, Kohlhepp tells investigators, he went back to Superbike and told them he was having trouble riding it. He wanted to try to trade it in for a smaller bike, he says.

But the shop’s employees were rude to him and made fun of his inability to ride the bike, Kohlhepp says.

After the bike was stolen, Kohlhepp says he filed a police report, but never saw the bike again. Then, he says, “I got to jonesing again for a motorcycle and started going back to the shop."

He tells investigators that during the visits, some of the employees were trash-talking about having another bike to pick up if he bought a new one.

“I got mad about it, and kept going out there,” Kohlhepp says. “Why I kept going to the same bike place I don’t really know.”

As Kohlhepp tells investigators about buying a 9mm handgun, he launches into a detailed discussion of firearms and swapping out parts. He returns to the subject at other points in the interview, veering off into tangents about ballistics and fingerprints.

Kohlhepp then recalls how on the day he shot the victims, he left an afternoon class at Greenville Tech and drove to a CVS in Boiling Springs, where he put on a shoulder holster with the 9mm handgun.

When he got to the bike shop, he says, he sat on a few bikes, stalling for time until both Ponder and Lucas were at the shop and all the customers had left. “Collateral damage is not cool,” he explains to investigators about why he didn’t want to shoot any customers.

Once Ponder arrived, Kohlhepp says he told him he wanted to buy the bike he was sitting on, so Sherbert took it to the back to prep it.

Kohlhepp says he waited for a few moments while paperwork was being prepared, then went to the back of the shop and shot Sherbert at least twice.

Kohlhepp then says he went to the front of the shop and encountered the three other employees. He says he shot Guy two to three times.

“I was not meaning to hit the mom. I prefer not to shoot women if I can,” he says. “She got thrown into it; she wasn’t a primary target.”

Kohlhepp says he then shot Ponder and Lucas as they ran for the front door. He says before he left, he walked back through the shop and shot each victim in the head.

Kohlhepp's tone is conversational as he speaks. He says he was focused during the shootings like it was a video game, and brags to investigators about how quickly he moved.

“I cleared that building in under 30 seconds. You guys would’ve been proud,” he says.

Kohlhepp later tells investigators he took the 9mm handgun apart and separated the pieces into trash bags and a bag of kitty litter. The bags were tossed into the dumpster at his apartment complex, he says.

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